


Wayfaring Stranger

by awkwardsoviet



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: i love craig boone a lot so i am writing about him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 03:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardsoviet/pseuds/awkwardsoviet
Summary: Boone completely forgot about her being shot, so he didn’t even make the connection between the wound and amnesia. He initially thought it was just normal forgetfulness, everyone forgets some things. Then she started to forget the names of places and people.





	1. Chapter 1

There were three rules to the Mojave Wasteland. One: carry enough water for the Philistine heat of the desert sun. Two: carry a gun bigger than your enemy. And three: never turn your back on the rolling dunes and rugged mountains.

               In a way, the desert was very much so the same as the ocean. At times, beautiful and serene, at others, dangerous and full of buried secrets. Like mist carried on the cool trade winds, sand whipped into dust devils scattered across the landscape. And if you turn your back on its awful beauty...well, you might just become a part of that collection of secrets, a bag of bones reclaimed by Mother Nature.

               Craig Boone had never seen the ocean. In fact, the only body of water he'd ever seen was Lake Mead and the mighty Colorado River. Both, however, were too far East for his liking, a thought that sat squarely in his chest like a boulder.

               It was midnight–or whatever counted as midnight in a world where irrelevancies such as time died in a wave of hot atomic fire. His shift high up in the dinosaur’s mouth started an hour ago, although it felt more like ten years. With expert eyes trained on the lonely remains of US-95 and the slightest chill to the desert breeze, Boone was left with little more than his rifle and his thoughts.

                He was on-edge. Not only was Novac subjected to surprise attacks from the Legion to the East, but recently, a string of violent feral ghouls from the old REPCONN site made their way down into the dusty little town, causing more trouble than residents cared for. Boone didn’t like ghouls—feral ones, at least. There was nothing human left about them, their DNA twisted and mutated beyond recognition. They were unpredictable, unwavering, and uncompromising. At least with human enemies, their actions could be predicted with some error. Ghouls however, could not be, a fact that made Boone all the more leery of their presence in the desert hamlet. The Legion, of course, proved to be the largest threat to Novac, however. Cunning, malicious, and ruthless, Legion slaver parties had no qualms about laying waste to the town. Boone, likewise, had no problem laying waste to them, although it seemed that their numbers were infinite. For every .308 caliber round lodged in the skull of a Legionary scout, another two crested the banks of the Colorado, vicious and ready to destroy everything the New California Republic stood for with fervor. Boone enjoyed his work though, with fury and vengeance lacing the tight, stable grip on his rifle.

               The night remained quiet. Cliff had long since closed up shop and gone to bed, so not even the dulcet Mr. New Vegas could be heard from downstairs. No, there was nothing but the occasional howl of a coyote and the bristling of a tumbleweed against pavement. Not even the lights of Helios One joined Boone, the power plant having gone dormant long ago. If he cared to, Boone could look north and see the lights of the Strip, like alien signals in the dark night, but he didn’t. There was nothing for him on the Strip, not anymore, at least. He focused on the road in front of him, shutting out everything else.

               It was sometime near dawn when exhaustion began creeping up on Boone like the rising sun. Despite his best efforts, his eyes slipped closed periodically, the growing warmth of the desert a blanket around him. He allowed himself a few minutes of quiet rest, which ended abruptly as the door to the sniper’s nest opened, his rifle leveled within a split second at the intruder.

               In the doorway stood a woman—small and fragile-looking, with gaunt eyes and hollowed cheeks. She wore a Vault 21 jumpsuit and a functional Pip-Boy, with a small pack and a worn varmint rifle on her back. Boone’s eyes lingered on the gauze wrapped around her forehead, stained faintly with what he assumed to be blood. She held up her empty hands in surrender.

               Boone lowered his rifle and sighed. “Goddamn it, don’t sneak up on me like that. What do you want?”

               “I’m just looking around, honest,” she explained. “Name’s Elizabeth. Your friend who runs the motel said you might be able to help me.”

               Boone’s eyes narrowed. “Help with what?”

               Elizabeth carefully lifted the gauze, showing off a jagged line of stitches near her hairline. “I want the guy that did this.”

               “Sorry, I’m not a detective,” Boone deadpanned, turning his back to her and watching the barren road once more, aggravated.

               “Well,” Elizabeth started, moving back to the stairwell, “I’ll be staying here for a few days if you change your mind.”

               A pregnant pause formed between the two as Elizabeth waited for an answer. When she realized she wasn’t going to get one, she turned the door knob and swung the door open, only to be stopped by a grizzled, calloused hand gripping her upper arm.

               “Wait.”

               She spun on her heel, wrenching her arm from Boone’s grasp in the process. “What is it?”

               “I think we can help each other. I want you to find something out for me. I don't know if there's anything to find, but I need someone to try,” he paused and sighed, searching for his words.

               Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “What do you want me to do?”

               “My wife was taken from our home by Legion slavers one night while I was on watch. They knew when to come and what route to take, and they only took Carla. Someone set it up. I don't know who, though,” Boone replied, cold and dejected.  

               Elizabeth sensed this was a sensitive conversation and pulled the door shut. “You think it’s someone in Novac?”

               “Exactly why I can only trust you with this. You’re new here, no one would suspect you asking questions.”

               “So, what should I do if I find this person?”

               Boone considered her question for a second, then reached up and pulled off his beret, handing it over. “Bring him out in front of the nest while I’m on duty. Put the beret on. It’ll be our signal, so I know you’re standing with him. Leave the rest to me.”

               Elizabeth took the beret, running her thumb absentmindedly over the patch. “Okay. I can do that,” she stopped, stuffing the hat in the pocket of her jumpsuit. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

               “Just find the son of a bitch that did it,” Boone snapped, ending their conversation as he turned towards the rising sun. As he watched a lone brahmin graze in the distance, he heard the door open and shut behind him, and the fading creak of the stairs.

               Three days passed. Three sleepless days, two long nights. He had passed Elizabeth occasionally around town, careful to avert his eyes and avoid any conversation, even though the anticipation was eating away at his patience. However, he knew If the guilty party was still in town, it wouldn’t be long until they put two and two together, and Boone would not have his revenge. He would not have the closure he so desperately needed. Still, the waiting was taking its toll on him. Every morning ended at the bottom of a bottle, and every night started with more cigarettes than he cared to count.

               Cliff had noticed the changes. He asked Boone at the start of every shift if there was anything he could do for him before closing, if he needed someone to talk to or just a warm meal. Boone flat-out refused his kind gestures. Everyone in Novac was guilty of Carla’s disappearance in his eyes, even those he was closest to. Until he knew who it was, he couldn’t trust anyone except the stranger in a vault suit.

               As he took his place in the nest for the night, he thought of her, of Elizabeth. Something obviously tragic had happened to her, judging from the wound on her forehead, but Boone wasn’t one to pry. That was just the nature of the Mojave—it chewed people up and spit them back out, damaged or destroyed in one way or another. No one came out of the desert unscathed, the unforgiving wasteland leaving its mark on all who chose to walk it.

               Like most nights, it was quiet along the desolate stretch of US-95. The night previous saw a few ghouls come down from REPCONN, and a stray golden gecko getting a bit too close to the town, but otherwise, Boone had nothing but silence and loneliness.

               At 2 a.m., however, Boone heard the distinctive sound of footsteps approaching from the right of his position. Soft as they were, they were still loud enough for Boone to estimate that it was more than one person. He shifted his rifle against his shoulder, sliding a round into the chamber and locking it.

               He saw the blue of Elizabeth’s suit bathed in the light from the motel first, relaxing his trigger finger, although he could feel his pulse pounding through his body. Following Elizabeth was Jeannie May Crawford, owner of the Dino Dee-Lite motel and one of the few people Boone considered himself close to.

               The two stepped onto the overpass, Elizabeth leading Jeannie to the side and pointing at the road below, claiming to see “a gecko nest” under a pile of rubble. As Jeannie peered over, Elizabeth stepped back and pulled on the scarlet beret.

               For a split second, time stopped. The desert stopped. The world stopped. There was nothing but Boone and his rifle, the sight centered on Jeannie May’s head. He had waited so long for this moment that there was no time to question it. He squeezed the trigger and watched as Jeannie May crumbled, the report of the shot still ringing.

               Elizabeth removed the beret with a glance at the nest, then headed back into town. Not more than five minutes later, she was in the nest, handing the hat back to Boone.

               He placed it back on his head, sighing as if a weight had finally been lifted.

               “How did you know?” he asked, noticing a few drops of Jeannie’s blood across Elizabeth’s face.

               She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “I found the bill of sale in her safe.”

               Boone read it. Twice. Three times, the words blurring in rage and grief. Jeannie had sold his wife and unborn child to the Legion for 1500 caps. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and burned the page, watching the ashes twirl away with the desert wind.

               “So that’s it then. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’d be like them to keep paperwork,” he said gruffly.

               Elizabeth placed a sympathetic hand on Boone’s arm. “It’s over now, though. That should at least make it easier to sleep at night. Or day, in your case.”

               “It should,” he said flatly. He pulled a small satchel of caps from his pocket, holding it out to her. “Here, this is all I can give.”

               Elizabeth pushed his hand away. “I don’t want your money. I’m glad I could do this for you. I know how it feels.” She tapped her bandages for emphasis.

               “Well,” Boone started, “thank you, regardless.”

               Elizabeth smiled faintly, then turned to leave. She stopped in her tracks however and faced Boone once more. “So, what will you do now? I don’t really think you can stay here, given the circumstances.”

               Boone shrugged imperceptibly. “Don’t see much point in anything, except hunting legionaries. Maybe I’ll wander, like you.”

               “Come with me,” Elizabeth offered, “we’ll kill more Legion together, and I could use the company.”

               Boone looked out at the desert before him, the lights of the Strip on the horizon, the stars high above the clouds. He thought about Jeannie, and Carla. He thought about Cliff, and Manny, and everyone else in Novac. He thought about this young woman with a gunshot wound to her head.

               “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”


	2. Chapter 2

The pair left shortly after dawn. Boone carefully packed his few necessities from his motel room, while Elizabeth took a quick bath in her own room. The two met in front of the dinosaur, ignoring the buzzards that already swarmed overhead.

               “Here,” Boone said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a beret identical to his own. “I had an extra one. Thought you’d like this.”

               Elizabeth beamed, and for the first time, Boone noticed the damage done to her face, her smile lopsided, her skin inflamed and bruised still.

               If she noticed him staring, she ignored it as she tugged the beret on proudly, adjusting her wild crimson hair around it. “Oh wow, thanks!”

               “So,” Boone started, “where are we headed?”

               Elizabeth messed with her Pip-Boy for a few seconds, then looked up, shielding her eyes from the already searing sun. “Well…your sniper friend, Manny, says he might know a thing or two about the guy that shot me.”

               “He’s not my friend,” Boone interrupted.

               Elizabeth shrugged, then continued. “Regardless, he won’t tell me what he knows until I do him a favor.”

               Boone could tell he didn’t like where this was going but kept quiet. “Which is?”

               “Clear out the ghouls up at REPCONN. I would normally tell him to take a hike, but I figured with two of us, it should be short work.”

               Boone frowned, eager to put Novac in his past. But he had promised her that they could help each other, and he wasn’t about to go back on a promise. “Alright. Let’s move then.”

               The two hiked the short road leading up to the REPCONN test site. There was evidence of fighting the closer they got to the building: sandbags, ammo caches, even spent shell casings. Elizabeth carefully looted any useful equipment as Boone kept a sharp eye out for anything that moved. Around 100 yards from the building, he spotted something—a feral ghoul, specifically, a Glowing One. Glowing Ones were stronger, wilder, and more importantly, more radioactive than just a regular feral. Capable of not only healing ghouls around them, they also could expel large amounts of radiation towards an enemy, making them sick before coming in for an up-close kill.

Elizabeth was about to cross the final stretch when Boone held out his arm, blocking her.

               “Shh, there’s something there,” he pointed, crouching and leveling his rifle.

               “What is i-?” Elizabeth began to ask, before being cut off by the crack of Boone’s rifle next to her.

               Boone ejected the spent casing, loading another round in its place. “Ghouls. Glowing Ones. Let me take care of them before we move any further.”

               Elizabeth nodded and backed up slightly. “Lead the way.”

               Within five minutes, six more Glowing Ones lay prone on the ground, their distinctive hue slowly fading as they died.

               Elizabeth let out a low whistle under her breath. “Gotta say, I’m _real_ glad to have you around.”

               Boone half-chucked. “Heh, well, try to be more careful before you go running in anywhere, okay?”

               “Gotcha,” Elizabeth confirmed, standing up and heading towards the building.

               Once inside, the pair was faced with more ferals swarming the lobby. Elizabeth drew her varmint rifle and pumped round after round into their torsos, adding several kills to her resume. Boone was rather impressed with her skill and was about to ask where she learned to shoot like that, but was cut off by a voice hailing over the intercom.

               “Hey! Over here! Are you listening?” the disembodied voice growled. “Go to the big room on the east side of this building and take the metal staircase all the way up. And hurry.”

               Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Boone. “What do you make of that?”

               Boone crossed his arms. “Figure we might as well listen to him.”

               Elizabeth consulted her Pip-Boy for directions and headed east, Boone following close behind. There was more evidence of fighting in the big room, including the body of a Nightkin and several ghouls in strange brown robes.

               At the top of the staircase, the Intercom spoke again.

“All right, Smoothskin, I'm letting you in. You better watch yourself. I'll sure as hell be watching you!”

The door swung open, revealing a short, balding man with beady eyes and a dingy lab coat. “God, but are you ugly! Get upstairs and talk to Jason before I throw up just from looking at you,” the man snarled, crinkling his nose.

“Who….is Jason?” Elizabeth asked, looking around.

They were in some sort of control room, crammed with laboratory equipment and terminals and monitors of all sorts. Directly in the middle was another staircase, framed by walls on either side. Curiously, ghouls in the same strange brown robes milled about with clipboards and components, hard at work on some complex task.

The man frowned even more. “Jason is the prophet. The only reason you're up here is because he wants to talk to you. I guess he had visions that a Smoothskin would stop by.”

Boone caught Elizabeth’s eye and shrugged imperceptibly, slinging his rifle over his shoulder.

Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “You do realize you’re not a ghoul, right?”

The man became visibly agitated, crossing his arms and standing just slightly taller. “Your pranks won't work on me, Smoothskin. Stop wasting my time. Go waste Jason's.”

“So,” Elizabeth asked as she climbed the staircase, “What do you suppose that’s all about?”

“I don’t know,” Boone answered in a low voice, “Let’s just get out of here as soon as possible.”

Upstairs, Elizabeth met the fabled Jason Bright, leader of the so-called Bright Brotherhood. Jason himself was a non-feral glowing ghoul, and had assembled as many like-minded ghouls he could, leading them toward something he called The Great Journey. However, “demons”—as Jason put it—had taken refuge in the basement of the facility, causing problems for the Brotherhood. These “demons” were apparently invisible and had often used the intercom system to tease Jason and the Brotherhood.

“Will you drive the demons away, wanderer?” Jason asked in his strange, ethereal voice.

“Sure,” Elizabeth conceded, taking the basement key from Jason and heading in the direction of the stairwell.

Boone stopped her as she placed the key in the door.                                                                                         

“From what Jason said, it sounds like there’s Nightkin down there. We gotta stay low and stay quiet. If you see any movement, point it out. They use Stealth Boys but they aren’t entirely invisible. Not to a trained eye, at least.”  

Elizabeth nodded silently, turning the key and pulling her worn varmint rifle in one fluid motion.

Boone moved into the room first, crouching behind a metal counter, poking his rifle around the corner at the open doorway. Elizabeth followed suit, taking position against the door jamb. Down the hall to the left, a shimmer like a clear flow of water caught her eye. Startled but composed, she gripped her rifle tighter with one hand, while motioning to Boone. The shimmer lumbered down the hallway towards her. The instant it was in Boone’s sightline, a single shot barked from his rifle, catching the Nightkin in the head. The floor rumbled as the blue-grey abomination fell to the floor.

Elizabeth looked at the body warily, poking it with the barrel of her rifle for good measure. “It’s a good sight bigger than the geckos back home, that’s for sure.”

Boone was about to ask where back home was for Elizabeth when he heard heavy footsteps coming from the right. He raised his scope, found the slight glint in his crosshair, and fired, leaving another body crumpled like a bag of concrete.

“Two down,” he whispered, loading another round.

The duo made short work of the maze-like passageways and rooms, working together as if they had always done this. Boone was amazed by Elizabeth’s efficiency—both as a spotter and as a shooter—and Elizabeth was likewise impressed.

When Elizabeth reported back to Jason that the demons were gone, his serrated and scarred flesh morphed into a facsimile of a smile.

“Praise the creator! And bless you, wanderer! The way is clear. I will lead my flock through the basement to the sacred site! I do hope you will follow us, there is much work to be done.”

Elizabeth watched as Jason herded his flock into the basement, taking the respite to pull a bag of dried mesquite pods from her pack, along with a bottle of murky water.

Boone frowned at the bottle and pulled one out of his own pack—filtered and crystal clear.

“Here,” he said, swapping the bottles.

Elizabeth looked at it with awe, offering her snack in return. For someone like Elizabeth whose sole job was to walk miles and miles living off the land, never truly having somewhere to settle, whose true home was the road itself with all its disease and danger, purified water was a rarity—something earned at the end of a long journey in a well-established city, overpriced but worth the caps just the same. She smiled at Boone, at a loss for words at both his kindness and his generosity.

Boone, however, didn’t take much notice, choosing to simply enjoy the companionable silence. He thought about the last twenty-four hours, about finding the truth to Carla’s kidnapping. A deeply-set anger filled his chest, along with a new sensation, something open, freeing. Something like peace, but not true peace. It was more of a Wasteland version of peace—chewed up and spit out as a crude rendition, and abomination of what once was. No, true peace had not come just yet for Boone, but he would take this small victory regardless.

“Well,” Elizabeth stood, yawning and stretching, “should we get a move on?”

The two made it back down into the basement of the REPCONN facility, and then further on into a twisting, sewer-like tunnel that opened onto another laboratory. A window spanning the far wall of the room looked down onto a platform, where Jason Bright and his followers scurried around a set of rockets.

The short, balding man in a lab coat—Chris Haversam, Elizabeth learned—greeted the pair with a scowl.

“Jason says that I am to cooperate with you on the final tasks necessary to launch the Great Journey,” he sneered, distain in his voice.

Elizabeth ignored the attitude. “So…how can I help you?”

Chris crossed his arms with a frustrated huff, as if his needs were common knowledge. “I was close to completing work on the rockets before we were driven into hiding on the top floor. Two components were missing: a quantity of Isotope-239 igniting agent, and a set of thrust control modules. The igniting agent is highly radioactive, and decays quickly. That's why we can't use the drums that leaked down on the launch pad, It's no longer potent enough. I need you to find an intact, shielded container of the igniting agent.                As for the thrust control modules, they were custom-built for these rockets. They won't even launch without them.”

“Any idea where I should look for this stuff?” Elizabeth asked, overwhelmed by both the technical terms and the task at hand.

Chris sighed again. “REPCONN has been ransacked so many times by scavengers, it's hard to know where the components might turn up. _If_ they turn up. There are some radioactive ruins to the east where you might find the isotope, and most traders around here wouldn’t have a clue what the thrust modules are, so if you know any junk dealers in the area, I’d start there. Now go bother someone else, smoothskin.”

Elizabeth and Boone took this as their cue to leave, climbing a nearby ladder to the surface. The bright Mojave sun felt both refreshing and oppressive compared to the dark basement, and it took several seconds for their eyes to adjust before heading east.

“I know these ruins,” Boone said, passing through Novac, “they’re pretty radioactive, no one from town ever goes within a hundred feet of them.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Well, I’m not from town, am I?”

Boone tossed the question around in his head for a few seconds, caught off-guard by her lackadaisical expression. Finally, he stumbled on the words he had been meaning to ask. “So…where exactly _are_ you from?”

Elizabeth stopped in her tracks, brows knitted. Boone instinctively followed her gaze but found nothing.

“I…I don’t remember, actually,” she relinquished, fiddling with the strap of her pack. “I guess it’s just memory loss from you know…being shot in the head and all.”

Boone felt heat spread across his cheeks. “I’m sorry…I didn’t thi-“

Elizabeth silenced him with a wave of her hand. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Home is such a Pre-War concept anyways.”

Boone couldn’t help but agree. Home meant nothing to him. The one place he was close to calling home betrayed him, taking his family and leaving him alone and broken. Home was a bitter memory, a nostalgia that sat in his periphery, there but just slightly out of reach, taunting him. Home _was_ a Pre-War concept of picket fences and apple pies. Home was lost in the desert sands, swept away on the mighty Colorado, traded between hands on the Strip, buried in the concrete of long-abandoned vaults. Home not only failed to exist in the Wasteland—it was destroyed.

The ruins of Clark Field, a former nuclear storage facility and current home of several golden geckos, weren’t as irradiated as Elizabeth expected. Boone took stage on a nearby hill, sniping any creature in the way as Elizabeth dashed around the ruins, looking for the igniting agent. To the south entrance was a dead pack brahmin, with the agent still secure in its long-forgotten saddle bags.

Elizabeth held the canister aloft, sprinting back to Boone, a proud smile plastered on her face. “Nice shooting,” she panted, throwing the canister into her rucksack. “So…any idea where we can find the thrust modules?”

Turns out, Boone knew of a place to the North—a small garage ran by a woman locally known as Old Lady Gibson. It was clear from looking at her why she was called so, but despite her age, she was no push-over, and the modules set Elizabeth back 500 caps, a fact she complained about on the walk back to the REPCONN site, the setting sun drawing elongated shadows across the land.

Elizabeth opened the door to the laboratory with little grace, eager to complete the task. She handed the components over to Chris, who looked shocked opposed to annoyed.

“Yes, that's the stuff. And the container's shielding must be intact, or you'd be dead by now,” Chris muttered, turning the igniting agent canister over in his hands. He placed it on a nearby table, then inspected the control modules. “And _these_ …seem to be in excellent condition. I didn’t believe in you, but I guess Jason was right about the Creator sending you.”

“So,” Elizabeth drawled, rocking back on her heels, “That’s everything, right? The Great Journey can begin?”

Chris nodded solemnly. “Yes, that’s everything. I’ll tell Jason the rockets are ready.”

He crossed the room to an intercom and informed the ghoul leader that the final components were in place.

Jason and his flock, now decked in space suits, took their places in front of the rockets.

“Gather, all. May the creator guide my words and help me speak true. The almighty creator has seen fit to answer our prayers. The time has come for us to board the rockets and begin the Great Journey.”

Mumbling broke out amongst the followers but was cut short when Jason spoke again.

“Though it may seem that all humans despise us, the creator has seen fit to instruct us differently. The Journey ahead would have been impossible if not for the intercession of two human friends, one new, the other a long-abiding companion. To our new friend, we say thanks, and promise never to forget how he cleared from our path the demons who sought to stay our Journey. But to Chris, we owe more than thanks. Chris, you have made this Great Journey a reality. From this moment forward, you will be remembered as the Saint of the Great Journey. We shall never forget you. I ask that you forgive us, Chris, and give us your blessing, and we bestow ours upon you. Seekers, board the rockets, take your seats. The Great Journey awaits! To the promised land we go! To the Far Beyond!”

“ _Human?_ What…No, no no…!” Chris balked, anguished.

Elizabeth reached out towards him, but he cowered away like a wounded animal. “Just…Go launch the rockets. There’s a cramped little mission control room back upstairs. Leave me alone.”

Once out of earshot, Elizabeth turned to Boone. “Jeez, that’s...gotta be tough on him, finding out after all this time that everything he identified as wasn’t true…”

Boone nodded. “Let’s just get these rockets out of here. Probably not helping him at all.”

The duet made their way to the mission control center. Elizabeth hovered her hand over the red button, but hesitated. She then grabbed Boone’s hand and together they launched the rockets. It was truly awe-inspiring to see them blast off into the dusky sky, and for a second, they stood there watching the smoke trails dissipate, knowing not where the Brotherhood would end up, but for some reason, it didn’t matter. It was over.

They made their way to the main doors, but before leaving, Elizabeth activated the intercom. “Chris? I don’t know if you can hear me, but there’s a little town called Novac down the road. You can start again, you don’t have to let this be the end.”

A few seconds passed, then the intercom crackled to life. “I guess…I guess it’s the only chance I have. Thank you.”

Boone and Elizabeth walked the road back to Novac in silence, each lost deep in thought, each finding something familiar in Chris Haversam’s story.

They crossed the gate into the Dino Dee-Lite Motel just as Manny Vargas stepped out of the gift shop, his shift ended. He glared in Boone’s direction as they approached but kept whatever he wanted to say to himself.

“The ghouls are not longer at REPCONN,” Elizabeth said coolly with narrowed eyes, admonishing him for the way he looked at Boone.

“Really? Unbelievable, man! I knew that wasn't gonna be easy, but I had a good feeling about you. You look like you been through a lot,” Manny spoke quickly, seemingly nervous.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “So about the man the checkered suit…?”

“Right, right,” Manny stammered, “The guy you're looking for, Benny, he was traveling with some members from my old gang. They were going to Boulder City.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Any idea why they went that way?”

“No clue. I know Benny hadn't paid up yet. Maybe that was where they were supposed to get square,” Manny replied, calming down a fraction.

“Well,” Elizabeth began, tapping her Pip-Boy and turning her back on the sniper, “That’s all I needed.”

“I hope it helps, I owed you,” Manny called out.

She ignored him and walked out into the twilight of the Mojave, setting her eyes north along I-95, the glaring lights of the Strip waking up as the rest of the Wasteland went to sleep.


End file.
